“Roots and Wings” is an on-going project close to my heart. I made the original work in the style, “Uprooted”, during a camping trip over a Memorial Day weekend following my first winter of ever experiencing the effects of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). So happy to be out in the woods and sunshine after a particularly rainy, gray winter, I ran around gathering branches, root balls, and bark remnants around our camp ground and arranging them to build a tree. Gradually the idea formulated, and by the end of the weekend, I had created quite the project for myself. I photographed what I had laid out with the materials, then packed them all up to bring to the studio and begin to clean, coat, and assemble the tree, then surround it with a black and white, silver gelatin print collage of a forest.

“Roots and Wings” is the second project I created in this style as a commission for a local Portland company. The title comes from a conversation with my mother-in-law telling me how she raised all 4 of her sons with roots and wings, a grounding sense of home and values and understanding of who you are, with the confidence to go out in the world and make your own fate. I felt that this spirit really embodies how I feel about the works.

I will never forget that feeling I had when I got my first bike: FREEDOM! So many childhood memories start and finish with me on that bike. It may have been an old hand me down Redline from my older brothers, but to me it was the newest and coolest wheels on the block. I was FREE! Free to go where I wanted. Free to make decisions: do I turn left, right, up the hill, or through the mud puddles. I learned to pick myself up, but only after figuring out that gravity works. I was in a bicycle gang. There were three of us. We were 9, and we ruled! I broke myself as many times as I broke that bike. Yet both of us managed to bounce back and ride another day.

I wanted these pieces to be free and wild, mixed with excitement, danger, and beauty, just like that first ride.

Product photography portfolio by Rachelle Clark. This gallery is a sample of the work Rachelle has done in product photography. More details to follow. To see additional samples or schedule a meeting to discuss how she can work with you please use the contact form below. Continue reading →

Fat Boy Slim changed my life. Yup, I said it. Fat Boy Slim saved me! I’ll never forget hearing him on MTV (back when they played music on MTV) for the first time. I ran to my local music shop and asked Rob, the owner, to order it for me that day. This opened the door for me that lead me to all forms of electronic music.

This is an on-going project. It is my attempt to personify the concept of Mother Nature, along with Walt Whitman’s beliefs he presented in “Leaves of Grass”. They are a variety of double exposures combined with collage techniques. The largest, and most difficult, piece in this project is 72 *54 inches. It is comprised of countless parts of trees assembled together to form one tree, with one figure representing Gaia imbedded into the parts to form the image. I built the image of the tree piece by piece, bark by bark, while simultaneously building the figure piece by piece, double exposed into each individual section of bark, having to match up scale and contrast with every exposure. It took months.

So many times I have found myself out in nature and overwhelmed by the sense of something far greater than me managing and moving through this world. I don’t try to understand it, just accept it, and find great comfort in that belief. These works are a homage to that.

“Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’ ” -The Talmud

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